* Posts by DR

202 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Feb 2008

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Jedi officers enlist with Scottish police

DR

FOI

how identifiable is the information in an FOI request?

I mean it's normal to ask on a job interview form for race/colour/religion but I always assumed that this stuff was confidential...

now it seems that any random nobody could send an FOI request to my company and find out my religion, and a whole host of other supposed to be private details etc...

Pirate Bay server becomes museum artefact

DR

titled

It’s understood the artefact has been added to the Stockholm-based museum’s “Inspiration Imitation” display, which aims to to stimulate interest in finding out more about the area of intellectual propety rights." [sic]

Surely that should be "inspiration (L)Imitation" that's all copyright/IP rights and patents ever seem to accomplish.

UK dons dunce hat on copyright law

DR

creating property

"Copyright is treated as property right…and hence copyright owners have the right to decide whether and how the copyrighted work is used."

this makes sense... and surely it's not only in the UK this is the case, I'm sure that there was some story that the family of Johnny Cash had stopped the Ring of Fire track being used in a Diarrhoea medication commercial.

that said, I can't understand why format shifting is a crime.

and if format shifting isn't a crime, then surely downloading MP3's of songs you already have on CD, or downloading videos that you already have on DVD but are too lazy to convert wouldn't be a crime either?

McKinsey: Adopt the cloud, lose money

DR

@internal cloud

I imagine that the reason that clouds that are internal work so well for Google is the way that they use them...

say they have a hundred servers, during the day time you'd imagine peak web connections, and they'd serve almost exclusively as web servers.

during periods of lesser usage the web crawling process might receive a higher priority and thus they are indexing pages ready to be searched the next day...

And yes, cloud computing is perfect if you;re an on-line business like and you need 2 servers to receive your web traffic for most of the year, and yet 50 around Christmas,

but the real question is, would you save money? what is the cost of your package that would allow for 50 of the clouds computers to be used practically exclusively by yourself?

and is it cheaper to buy 50 servers and only turn 48 of them on in the run up to Christmas?

that way you have the same provisioning, yet you make cost savings by switching off when you don't actually need the servers rather than paying all year round for capacity that you may not need.

Also, how robust are these cloud services, it's all very well to say that you;re a small business who only need 2 servers for 48 weeks of the year, but how many others will need 50 at Christmas? are there hundreds or thousands of servers sitting on standby for 48 weeks in the run up to Christmas? do you see your service degraded when everyone else is seeing a peak in demand even if you're not?

It has to be one or the other, either the cloud companies DO have enough servers that they can serve all companies demands that are using them at Christmas,

or when it gets to that time of year, you find out your supplier oversold their capacity and everyone experiences the negative effects. (much like broadband suppliers!).

and if they haven't oversold their capacity, then surely they have too much capacity for 48 weeks of the year, and who pays for that? the customer of course.

so you have the choice I guess.

use a cloud, pay for 5 servers all year when you only need 2, then at the time when Christmas comes, you need 50 servers, but you still only pay for 5, but you don't really get the full capacity of 50 servers.

still cheaper to have your own equipment that you just leave off until you need it.

(we call that provisioning!)

Carry On producer Peter Rogers dead at 95

DR
Coat

@where's the IT angle.

Working in IT often feels like being in a Carry On film.

UK's visa fingerprint system fails

DR
Happy

at last proof

the people who plan these scheme lack opposable thumbs!

Steptoe storage vendors cash in on junk platters

DR

it just doesn't add up

"OK, so the sealed boxes have less failures than individual disks, but how do they out-do individual disks in RAID groups? Are the boxes not just RAID groups themselves, and if so how are they magically better than separates?"

you've not missed anything... the drive canisters as described in the story are literately just multiple drives bolted together.. one fails, and another one takes over. data is rebuilt using existing Raid methods.

all I can say is surely this is common sense as to why nobody does this.

say you buy a disk canister. it has four disks in it, only one disk in the canister is used at a time, there are multiple canisters, (we'll say 4) in your array of canisters, that's 16 disks in total, but you can only use 4 at once,

when a drive fails the intelligent canister just shuffles the next in line into service, and you suppose that this makes the disk canisters last four times longer than a traditional disk cause there is four of them.

and let you spend less time maintaining the storage arrays...

except it doesn't.

let's employ a little thing called common sense...

we'll look at some figures,

1 disk costs £100.

so the 4 disks you were planning on putting in your storage array costs £400.

now say you want to use these canisters, you spend £400 per canister (cause it's actually just four disks taped together). you still need four, so you're spending £1600 on disks... (plus whatever extra the hardware costs to recognise disk failure and shuffle the next disk in place along).

Anyway, that's a £1200 over spend on what you could be spending for the same storage,

now in my experience it takes perhaps 30 minutes or to change a disk, and whilst it's not the most skilled job in the world to take out a hot swapable disk and add a new one in, we'll pay then a very high rate.

costs, £100 for the disk, and costs £50 of an engineers time in man hours, (that's £100 per hour that engineer gets, -I want that job!)

your average disk in my experience doesn't actually fail, but we'll ignore the fact that practically everyone has seen servers in commission for five or ten years with no disk failures...

and suggest that every disk will fail in three years.

now we have investment cost,

£400 hardware + £100 engineer time (total 500)

after three years.

£300 hardware + £100 engineer time. (total 900)

after 6 years

£200 hardware + £100 engineer time (total 1200)

after nine years.... well you'll have probably thrown the disk canisters away.

but £100 for disks, + £100 engineers time (total £1400)

notice that I adjusted the price to reflect the fact that your £100 few hundred GB disks of today are worth less in 3 years, and even less in 6 years, (in fact my example showed these disks held their cost price rather well!).

anyway, you've got 12 years of service,

you've used the same amount of disks 16, you've used four times the amount of man hours replacing disks, and yet still saved money?

The point is that these companies didn't invest loads and decide it was a bad idea, then invested loads and decided that people would realise it's too expensive to have four times the amount of hardware as you need sitting idle waiting to be used. especially as the redundant devices may actually go their entire service life ever actually being powered up...

Now if you say that this technology was to be used on a space station, or satellite, when it's not simple a case of a quick trip to a data centre, or into a server room to replace the disk, then, (and only then when the cost of fitting a disk vastly out numbers the cost of the the disk) is it worth buying multiple redundant spares to just sit there waiting for things to go wrong.

Virgin Media switches to Gmail

DR

@So, credentials then..

. By Blacklight Posted Wednesday 15th April 2009 12:07 GMT

So how will this work?

I have a VM account (accessed via POP3) AND a Gmail account.

umm, the article says, you keep your existing virgin, ntl, blueyonder ect addresses, just the mail is served from Gmail servers, (so you logon as whoever@virginmedia.com, or whoever@blueyonder.com to get to your virgin media mail, and you log on as whoever@gmail.com to get to your gmail accout...

with regards changing settings, I'd be rather surprised if Virgin didn't just make this seamless by changing their DNS records to point to a different end point.

eg smtp.virginmedia.com would end up pointing to the same address as smtp.gmail.com and you -the end user wouldn't have to change anything in your settings, you still think that you get the service from Virgin, just the backend is hosted by google.

McAfee: Save the planet - use a spam filter

DR

save the planet... buy our software

my estimations of spam filtering software is that none are 100% accurate.

some spam always gets through. and you still need a cursory glance at your spam folder to make sure nothing important has been deleted.

humans are much better at detecting spam than machines.

so by my reckoning, it uses more time, to read all emails that get through, (and deleting false negatives that the spam filter doesn't pick up) and then check the spam folder, (deleting all the true positives and reading all the false positives that the spam filter thought was spam).

and in this survey we're suggesting that time = energy...

so in *some cases*, using spam filtering software consumes more energy, and more time. and thus has a greater environmental effect.

Note the emphasis on some cases.

How the government uses dirty data to legislate morality

DR

@Crime depends on a perception of a criminal?!?!?!?!?

"But, as a crime, whether rape takes place or not depends on the perception of the perpetrator - whether or not he had reasonable cause to believe that consent was present."

Sorry, does it mean that if I don't think/know it is a crime to steal, I can come and pick up your computer and everything else I like?

Or if somebody believes that wearing short skirt or tight t-short (both men and women) means a sign of attraction, is it OK for that person immediately to try to use that opportunity and some "accidental" no and physical resistance or even stillness as a sign of love?!?!?!?

No, what it means is that sometimes people can get their wires crossed,

Take for example a man and a woman who meet in a bar, get on famously, go home together, get undressed, get in bed together, have sex...

but neither actually planned to have sex, neither started the night wanting to have sex. neither asked, "is it ok to have sex with you" -because that's not a natural question.

both set out distinctly not wanting to have sex, neither gave consent, but both got carried away in the heat of the moment...

both could feasibly say that they were plied with alcohol and raped.

whilst the other thinks that they had consensual sex.

BSA hijacks Somali pirate hype

DR

@Stop it already By Christopher Ahrens

Its not software piracy, it copyright infringement, and besides, the 'Pirates' in Somalia are Privateers, not pirates (They are 'Government' sponsored to go after their enemies, IE everyone else, pirates are in discriminate)

ummm, you;re wrong there.

originally privateers were employed by the government to target specific ships.

E.g. British privateers in the Caribbean would be targeting Spanish ships.

Pirates came after privateers, there a kind of freelance, go after anyone kind of bunch, who don't get government backing...

and since there is no government in somalia, I rather doubt that the Somalian pirates are government backed privateers...

anyway, haven't the relevant industries been calling music/software pirates pirates from the start in order to conjure up images of robbery?

Brussels to sue UK over Phorm failures

DR
Unhappy

@So sad that we have to rely on Brussels to protect us

I don't know what to think...

In one sense, thank you to our EU overlords at Brussels for actually saying that the law is the law and needs to be followed. they are protecting us at a time when our police and government failed to do so...

on the other hands, who will the fines impact? certainly not the people who carried out the crimes, the government will be fined and the tax payer will foot the bill, yet again the tax payer will be paying for the acts of big businesses trying to get a bit more money... so that's hardly protecting us is it?

As far as I can see the only good that will come of this is that *finally*the government and police *might* wake up and deal with their own law breakers, though the stark reality is probably that they won't, they can continue to snooze on the job now knowing that someone else will do all the law enforcing bits and they don't have to worry.

Twitter overrun by weekend of powerful worm attacks

DR

I find it hard to believe...

that the article says that people Trust twitter... and that if we think that worms on social networking sites are harmless we should think again because big business are involved.

firstly, anyone who trusts something user generated, is a fool, anyone who thinks that they should be safe because their friends are their friends and they completely trust them is a fool, because they don't know what their friends are getting up to. and what they'vev downloaded/been infected by etc...

secondly, anyone who rates twitter as important because some celebs decided to write about their lives, or because a few businesses think it's a great way to get free adverts in 140 char or less messages is also a fool.

if you like using twitter, then fair enough, each to their own, but don't inflate it's importance by saying that everyone trusts the site and that big celebrities and big businesses use it.

BMW opens up to haptic car doors

DR

crash

what happens if you crash your car into a lake?

that already messes with central locking trapping people into the car sometimes, and now you may not be able to open the door at all as some sensor will detect that there is a large mass (of water) very close (touching) the door...

Phorm moves beyond privacy - except when slating rivals

DR

haterz

did he really call his opponents Haters?

and did he really use the phrase, "Don't even go there"?

dear, oh dear...

Summary care records - you might die, but they never will

DR

say what now?

since when have you had to sanitize or destroy all hardware to delete a database record inside (what I assume) is a relational database.

this (confusing) point aside...

Can I just get this straight... so, unless you opt out before the database is created, you;re going to be recorded in the database, and you can still chose to opt-out, but in the event that you opt out you won't actually be opted out, because your data will still be there because the guys who built the database can't figure out how to write, "delete from 'patients' where x=`y`;"

So you have to opt out now, or always be included and never be able to opt out?

isn't this completely not lawful?

I assumed that the data protection act enabled you to request that if a company holds data against you then you had rights to request that data is deleted...

Righty ho...

I'm now set for life then...

step 1, get included on the data base.

step 2, request removal

step 3, freedom of information request -what have you go on me.

step 4, sue for not complying with data protection act

go to step 2, (or 3).

and now knowing that the records can't be deleted step 4 could be substituted for sue for not complying with freedom of information request.

if they had data on you, and can't delete it, when they come back saying, we've got nothing mate after the first time you sue, then you say, you're lying, I know you're lying and repeat as necessary

iPhone's Wi-Fi problems cause heated speculation

DR

hmmm...

"chort, it's a problem with all the routers and not just the one I set up home. So far the only idiot in this topic is you commenting on something you have no clue what is all about.

Someone must know which files are affecting this to delete/edit them. Apple doesn't care. WE have to find the answer.."

Iphone works with wireless router before upgrade,

Iphone doesn't work with wireless router after upgrade, hmmm. I wonder what could have caused the problem.

you've found that fiddling with settings and changing all kids of things helps, though at the end of the day this probably just puts you in the "it works when the battery is low" camp.

you say that you think that apple just needs to tell you what files to delete?

Christ, by all means you just take that massive firmware upgrade and delete a few files, change a few lines.

in fact I dare you.

no prizes for guessing how much that could mess up your device.

IPS misses its ID cards for foreigners target

DR

chip and pin why?

if the card contains biometric data then what's the point in chip and pin?

all you need to do is replace he keypad from existing chip and pin readers with finger print scanners.

why would you need a pin number to access a card that had biometric data on it, which should be many times more infallible than a four digit pin number...

the four digit pin of the future would surely be, index, middle, ring and little finger?

the idea of integrating chip and pin does set up a nasty picture of this ID card becoming a one size fits all card, where you are getting a passport, driving license, and bank card all in one small handy piece of plastic.

but then also makes it so that loosing this card is literally loosing all of your cards in one unfortunate accidental loss.

also what about people with multiple accounts/cards? if the chip and pin is for access to monetary funds as well, then which monetary funds? my current account? savings account, any one of a number of credit cards?

Next iPhone to make you a film editor?

DR

and the point?

the cameras shit, at least for making movies,

the software, no matter how good it may be to use, (lets face it apple do make good software), will be squashed into a tin screen... (thus making this useful is going to be an uphill battle).

and when you're done it's not like you'll be able to send the files via mms anyway...

what's the point?

I could see the point if this was just an app that people downloaded, but something coming with the phone? just doesn't make sense..

Carbon capture would create fizzy underground oceans

DR

Idea

where you have a gas platform, and a big hole under it where gas used to reside.

why not make massive undersea landfill? all you need to do is chuck the solid organic mater down there, and the gas collection equipment is already in place to collect the methane that comes off over time.

YouTube yanks music videos from German site

DR

@Chad H.

"Again, you show your ignorance!

What is the title of this story? "you tube YANKS music video content" they ARE pulling! Everything! Pay attention!"

I think it's you that's showing your ignorance here,

if youtubes business model is unsustainable because people want to upload tracks by artists, or they want to upload their cover version then it's you tubes problem,

if youtube can't or won't vet videos for violations for a license model that they are signed up for then again it's youtubes business model that is flawed.

As I said. the PRS license includes original recordings, and cover recordings.

Now.. how about you pay attention?

a quick search of youtube for "cover" shows lots of people who have covered music, even put that in the name, so no, you tube haven't pulled all the music, and have likely not even pulled half of the music. -not even performed a basic search of video titles to try to identify offending material.

lets take this video. -which comes near the top of the search results.

Vanilla Sky - Umbrella (Rihanna Cover)

Vanilla Sky performing Umbrella by Rihanna. ...

video lang: getattr(, 'lang', '')

Translate

View original

(Translation disabled)

1 year ago 12,044,570 views

twelve million views.

I believe that this license covers it

http://www.prsformusic.com/playingbroadcastingonline/onlinemobile/prsonline/Pages/Onlineapplicationform.aspx

it costs £53+VAT per 45,000 streams

that video therefore should have gathered royalties paid to the PRS of, ~£14,133+VAT

now if google can't support that kind of cash which is by law owed to the rights holder through the PRS then they shouldn't be publishing the video at all.

but at the moment the fact is that they've offered that video for download, they owe that money and probably other money, for breaking the law regards music and copyright licensing.

don't tell me that they've pulled the music that they were offering when a simple search shows me results "1-20 of millions", with some of those results owing that much on their own...

AS I SAID.

you tube haven't pulled all music, ignorance is no defence, their business model allows for people upload copyrighted content which goes unchecked. their business model is flawed.

"You tube is famous for being bought with no revenue stream..." that's their problem, not the artists...

you tube have a flawed business model, they allow people to upload copyrighted works in their own videos,

they ignore the fact that they should pay for the right to do that.

their business model seems to revolve around the fact that they ignore the fact that they should, (by law) be paying for something.

DR

@ dr By Chad H.

and the one that said they didn't pay and chose to pull...

umm no they didn't.

the performing rights license covers a lot of things, including covers (and there are still lots of people on you tube with their version of a song).

it also covers podcasts etc that have theme musics and background music etc

so all peoples weekly updates etc, including any videos with tunes playing in the background or with introduction music also fall foul of this law.

you tube is hosting it youtube is making it available you tube should be paying for that.

like I either said, either pay properly.

or pull content.

half heartedly pulling content won't do either,

do you think it'd be right if I offered a hundred tunes for download/streaming then the PRS said buy a license and I said no I'll pull the tunes and only offer 50 instead?

would I still be wrong? -yes,

would I still be breaking the law? -yes.

and until either you tube, pay for the right to stream these style of videos, or pull all content that includes these type of 'violations' then they are still wrong, and they are still breaking the law...

so far as the argument that they aren't devaluing music,

do you think that'd work for me? if I start an internet radio station showing ads, and say i get such low revenue that I can only afford to pay one hundredth of the license fee's. and considered that fair.

DR

Google should pay or pull

it's the law after all.

if you want to offer music for streaming/download then you need a license so that the artist get paid.

read the PRS website, it's quite clear on this, and there is a license model for online radio/streaming stations.

it's not like this is the music industry not keeping up with the times.

if you want to offer music for download then you need a licence, if you don't get a license then you need to not offer music for download.

no matter how big of a company google are, they need to comply with the law and stop people putting up music videos, (this also includes people making cover recordings of other peoples stuff and uploading that to youtube). -and again there is even a license model for that!

Basically google either need to put up the money to actually operate their business within the law, or change their business to operate within the law.

it's not like it's be hard to tell either what's been going on, each video shows how many times it's been viewed, so it wouldn't be that hard for the PRS to say this video was view 10,000 times, that video was viewed 30,000 times etc so you owe this much.

Most undergraduates 'show fear when asked to do maths'

DR

ehhh?

"many students choose degrees different to those they preferred – and in which they would be really good in many cases"

how could they be good at the subject if they didn't like and couldn't do maths?

BBC Trust moots new licence laws to cope with net

DR

live recording or not the answer was actually above

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_world/communications/television_licences.htm

You need a TV Licence to use any television-receiving equipment to watch or record TV programmes as they are being shown on TV. These include programmes on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5, cable and satellite television. Television-receiving equipment includes:

* TV sets

* set-top boxes

* DVD recorders

* video recorders.

You don't need a television licence if a TV set cannot receive TV programmes and is used only:

* for close circuit monitoring

* for watching pre-recorded videos or DVDs

* as a computer monitor – see under heading You don't use your television set or other device to watch or record broadcast programmes.

You do need a licence to watch TV on a mobile phone or other battery-operated device.

so if you use a desktop computer that plugs into the mains then have a tuner card you'll need a license,

if you have a laptop and either watch online or have a USB tuner card then you don't because it's a portable battery operated device.

US judge bars teen 'sexting' charges

DR

@Medium not Participants

You say that recieving is illegal,

but we're talking about text messages, it's a push technology, you physically send people the message, requesting to be sent an image of child porn may be illegal, but just being sent it I doubt would be covered by the law.

downloading from the internet is different since you physically request the files.

I also wonder at the amount of people saying that a 13 year old in a bathing suit isn't child porn, if the police raided your neighbour and found their computer with hundreds or thousands of pictures of kids in swim suits. you'd be concerned no? probably say that they are looking at child porn? but then that's you defining porn, so should we be concerned that you'll categorise this as porn?

Whilst I do disagree that this is porn, it really is in the eye of the beholder.

‘Wikipedia killer’ pilfers blogosphere, taunts bloggers

DR

default copyright law

I can understand how this protects search engines as they are having to log and index pages. and usually only display a small proportion of the page to show whether the passage they think may be relevant is indeed relevant.

but how does this protect a site republishing in full and making money from doing it?

if I copy and paste all the articles on a newspapers website and make money off that then I could be sued under copy right law? if I scan pages from a book and publish the book online for free I can get sued/prosecuted...

why does the law protect others doing it if they decide to make this their business model?

Android tethering app tossed

DR

I've got an XDA

Provided by O2, customised by O2 with their app, (i.e when I reset the device all the customisation comes back and the little O2 apps).

my phone has an application installed from new called modem link that lets me connect my phone to my computer as a USB modem.

So here is my strange predicament.

o2 let me do it, they provided the app to let me do it, they provide unlimited data so that it's worth doing it...

but now they are suggesting that I can't do it? (I know this related to t-mobile but I'm thinking about the iPhone tethering conundrum as well).

Cosmonaut bemoans ISS toilet row

DR

I just don't get it

I understand that you might charge someone to take a person to space, or equipment to space that is not from your own nation.

(why should Russia pay to take Americans into space, why should Americans pay to take Russians into space?).

but really, why is it that the American government have responded to this realistic concern, that it costs to take people to space, with a pathetic retort of well you can't use our bits then?

it costs hundred, possibly even thousands of dollars per kilo to take matter into space, it can't possibly take that much to relieve yourself.

in essence, what I'm saying is that I agree with the statement from the Russians, it costs to get to space, so if we take your men/equipment then you can pay us, (and visa versa). but once we're up there then lets just share all the equipment and facilities.

I mean, what if the air cleaning/scrubbing was done by Russian equipment, are they going to have to have an American model as well? or do the Americans have to have respirators and tanked oxygen?

What's wrong with a Twitter degree?

DR

"That's because the former actually have a sensible cause, whilst the latter are fucking idiots"

Ummm, yet only a few days ago there was some stuff on here suggesting that the melting of ice caps isn't caused by increased levels of CO2, but rather decreased levels of dust in the atmosphere...

so perhaps it's the people like you who are blindly assuming all that you're told is correct that are in fact the "fucking idiots".

PC firms slammed in latest Greenpeace eco report

DR

Am I the only one

who notices that they are very quick to highlight when companies have become less green, putting a big white arrow to show where they were.

but the same cannot be said of those companies who are making big improvements.

Researchers poke holes in super duper SSL

DR

google analytics

Oh, boo hoo...

so you won't be able to get analytics code at your checkout pages etc?

to be honest, your store doesn't need SSL just the checkout part where the contents of your basket are checked and paid for.

and you don't need analytics code there (at checkout) since everyone who gets there will have already been on your previous pages.

AND.. if you do require the kind of information that the analytics code gives, then write it yourself, and host it yourself on your secure pages

The Pirate Bay punts BitTorrent cloaking device

DR

€5 a month

it occurs to me that unless you are downloading prolifically your €5 a month would be better spent actually buying CDs or movies.

but I fear that the article may be right, for the average person who is just downloading for the sake of it, this may well be too much to pay for.

VMware VMs cost how much?

DR

customers should be "assessing virtualisation on a ‘cost per application’ basis.

exactly...

people should be weighting the cost of virtual servers against the cost of physical boxes...

on a cost per application basis.

there is no point in having the latest greatest machine as an intranet server in a company of 20.

and even if you don't have the latest greatest, you still have to power the older machines

that is to say if you have a small company

and you have a

file server,

a domain controller,

an email server

a web server (for external clients to see your business site)

a sharepoint server (for intranet)

a database server (for the sharepoint site)

a proxy server

a terminal services server

a central AV server

a backup server

and they are all separate machines, that are very underused, then you should be considering putting those onto one box.

you won't save anything on licensing. but you will save on disk costs, (as your VMware disks can be better spread around your storage). you will save on machine costs, (because you nly need buy one machine rather than nine) you will save on power and cooling costs -because again 1 machine takes less power than nine.

you'll also make a saving on space costs as well...

I mean, if you assume that you;re working in an office where those are your internal corporate servers, then you have development servers, test servers etc that are still needed, that could be the difference between needing one rack, or two rack in your server room.

German police boot down doors of Wikileaks offices

DR

I may be being stupid here

Right, first off, blocking access to known sites isn't going to do a damned thing.

the reason is that this relies on people reporting images then in due process the site may get added.

I assume that the people reporting sites are not looking for them and in fact accidentally stumbling upon them.

i.e those looking for them are probably going to find them faster than those who just happen to come across them.

so first of, paedophiles are already able to access the material, until it's blocked them they look elsewhere.

second, this doesn't protect kids, because the abuse has already taken place, the protection has already failed. all this does is stop the distribution, which is not the harmful part of child porn, it's the abuse involved with the creation.

Thirdly. it's fucking easy to register a new domain, what's that, free-child-porn.com has been blocked? well that's ok we'll register free-child-porn.co.uk /.us/.au/.me/.nz/.sa/.ru etc etc etc etc

and the abuse continues and continues to find new harbour all over the internet.

fourthly... and what would stop the abuse.

last time I registered a domain name, it cost me money. I had to give a credit card number.

lets look at the first five names on the denmark child porn list...

the first was registered by domains at cost corp. how about going to their office and following the financial trail to the people making and hosting these sites?

the second domain registration was sold by a company in oragan US. (in beaverton /dirty snigger).

a little knock on their door from someone investigating might lead them to a few people

ignoring the next few cause they are the same

the next one is registered by KEY-SYSTEMS GMBH, one after that the domain registrar is Go-daddy...

and the list goes on...

assuming that these are all companies in complicit countries, (and they all are in America) why have no requests for information regarding these people been issued? or court warrants granted for these details.

if the authorities really wanted to protect the children then they could.

they could do some real policing, follow some financial trails, track people around the globe find out who is doing all this...

Oh, my mistake, it only matters to launch a big investigation when people try and fail to rob a bank... then they'll follow the account details.

the great firewalls and block lists sounds like a much easier and cheaper idea.

certainly it's easier than real policing.

and it leads a nice technology in with moral campaigners support that allows further suppression of informations.

I mean for FFS at least China was honest when it built a massive firewall to block everything that the government doesn't want you to know!

this is not about protecting kids. it can't possibly be about protecting kids as it does nothing to protect them, it does nothing to bring justice, and lets abusers carry on...

US mums sue anti-sexting crusader

DR

@pascal monnet

"Let's make one thing clear : child pornography is when an _adult_ takes pics of minors in various states of undress or suggestive poses."

pornography is defined as images designed to arouse.

a child was the subject of the picture.

therefore child porn is a technically accurate description.

however, the law against child porn is meant to protect children from abuse. so this is following the law to the letter whilst ignoring the intent of the law...

I would assume that most of the parents who did send their kids on this course realised this simple fact.

of course all of that said, I don't believe that re-ned-ucation is the answer to this either.

Madoff data can be extradited back to US

DR

so it's illegal to send data to the US

and other countries...

so how did that database that went missing in the states end up there?

how come companies are allowed to have billing centres, and call centres, in countries like India?

Facebook encourages ISP customer protests over Phorm

DR

Isn't phorm opt out?

so rather than making a big fuss about specific domains being targetted, why don't those who don't want their traffic monitored go ahead and ask the ISP not to monitor them...

yes, I agree that the scheme should be opt in rather than out...

but what is the point of people writting to facebook saying, make sure they don't capture my habits whilst I'm on your site, if everywhere else they go their surfing habbits are recorded.

it's not for domain owners to take responsibility for their users, if the individual users don't want to be a part of phorm they should opt themselves out.

Romanian hacking group downs tools

DR

I have to say that I agree with the hackers

yes, what they were doing was wrong, but then left unchecked I think that most sites would be insecure...

I should think that what irked these guys most wasn't so much that they didn't get the fame they desired, it was that they posted evidence of actual exploits whilst the people they were effectively helping out sat back and just said, what me big security vendor, no, they are lying, screen shots you say well they must have photo shopped them or something).

Apple sued over iPhone e-bookiness

DR

brain waves

well there goes the next fifty years of innovation.

I was looking forward to people actually getting around to inventing stuff like this.

but instead it will be stifled, because the guy putting in the hard work will have it all ruined by the guy who once said.

wouldn't it be cool if there were an e-book where the pages would turn when I thought it.

To be honest I feel that the system needs a shake up. people shouldn't be allowed to patent vague ideas, (like brain controlled books) without proof of concept.

his proof of concept could have been a room sized MRI scanner that measured his brain patterns and turned a page or scrolled down or something, something actual, real and tangible.

these wouldn't it be cool if ideas shouldn't be allowed. at least if they are patentable then it should be for a fixed short period of time, that would allow dreamers to try to sell ideas without getting ripped off...

Newfangled rootkits survive hard disk wiping

DR

maybe I just don't understand

Another reason to get a VM

By David Posted Tuesday 24th March 2009 23:47 GMT

Virtualise the BIOS, then you can just can the infected machine image.

surely in order to use the virtualised bios, which needs to run on the hardware, you'd still need some way of accessing basic input and output systems to actually access the hardware?

Pot Noodle boils up instant doner kebab

DR

bloody city boy

"And what are they doing bringing out a doner kebab flavour? How lazy do you have to be. If you want that authentic taste, go around to a kebab shop, where they cook it for you in the time it takes to boil a kettle."

He might be able to just wander around the corner, but not everybody lives in cities with a kebab house on every corner.

Leaving PCs on costing UK business millions

DR

good idea.

we used to have a policy at a place I worked where all desktops were turned off overinght.

and if you wanted to connect from home at the weekend, and so needed your machine to be on we had an Intranet application that's send a magic packet to the machine so that it'd boot.

Wake on LAN.

then after they finished working from home they could just shut down again.

Worm breeds botnet from home routers, modems

DR

@ only the lan side

I rather suspect that this is based at affecting routers from the WAN side.

What you say, but you can't get to that.

My home router sits behind a cable modem, that is accessible from the WAN side, becase virgin can access it.

your BT router is accessible from the WAN side, else how would have BT enabled their wireless hotspots with a firmware upgrade pushed overnight?

I agree, my netgear router that sits behind the cable router can't be accessed from it's red interface unless I specifically enable it. that doesn't mean that the hardware that I don't control but is still sitting in my house can't be compromised.

Lawyer-client privilege no bar to surveillance, say Lords

DR

nothing to see here

What you though was confidential isn't.

government is told that something is unlawful but continues to do it anyway...

same shit different day...

London health authority put on notice over data breach

DR

but who is responsible?

the guy in charge,

or the over worked IT guy who wasn't properly allowed the time and space to actually wipe the machines?

it's all very well to say use DBAN, but if you do that where the PC is set up then you will get complaints from the guys who see their desk space being used by a useless box sitting in the way of their upgrade.

And I doubt that the IT offices are large enough to store a mountain of computers whilst they were waiting for the time to get around to wiping them before disposing of them...

I'm not defending them, just suggesting it's probably not that the person who put these there was likely up against it and it was just something that was overlooked.

or perhaps this is a good call to have a situation where no data is actually on the machines, and is instead only accessed, from some kind of large centralised database

(bring on the big databases... umm no wait,, I can't believe I just said that).

El Reg Street View snappers caught on camera

DR

page six

Is also an example of the face recognition blurring failing to work...

I know that the guy has covered a quarter of his own face with a camera, but still seems quite recognisable.

Failed tax system still causing grief

DR

on average 770 a year over paid

so I guess that means that some will have been paid right, perhaps some over paid by only a littl (say £50 per year). others over paid by thousands.

really can it possibly be that difficult?

IMO surely the best thing to do is purposefully calculate lean, that way you never have to deal with an underpayment, people in the worst situation then don't have to worry about loosing more money next year because not only have their payments been reduced by ~£50 a month, but they are also paying back ~£50 per month, (so net income is down by over £100)...

anyway.. calculate the payments a little under, then come November press the big button marked GO.

and anyone who is paid right gets to stick as they are, anyone who was underpaid get a nice payment just on Christmas to ease the burden at arguable the tightest time of year.

eSATA: A doomed stopgap?

DR

device support

I think that as many people have said above, surely it comes down to device support...

even if it cost the same amount for a manufacturer to put in an esata port as it does a USB port the masses are always going to want a usb port.

why? because it supports all kind of devices, mouse/hdd/printers/cameras/phones/wifi adapters/serial adapters/wireed ethernet adapters/external displays the list goes on

and I truely believe that's why USB has beaten firewire for support as well, fire wire being useful for transfer to external hdds because of a greater speed and video cameras... but these are specific applications. e.g the supported device list is limited.

and with eSATA the supported device list falls to just 1 device.

I assume that USB3 will be backwardly compatible as well, meaning that I don't have to replace any devices regardless of their age.

it's not that eSATA is bad by any means, just that with space as a premuim, (either in laptop cases, or in regular motherboard backplane you're going to go with the one that the most people can use more.

and the select few that really want that eSATA adapter because they have an external disk that is eSATA capable are going to buy an extra adapter. and they'll consider this money well spent.

they few that don't want this are not going to buy that extra adapter, and would probably consider it a waste to have included such a thing to start with.

Blu-ray Disc added to UK shopping basket

DR

basket changing

Well...

I think that we have here two sides to look at the argument, though one is fatally flawed.

Firstly, if they change the basket year on year, then yes, they will never see an actual relationship. the fact is that they change all the time. the CPI should be a weekly shop basket, i.e bread milk etc, that'd give a real indication of what people are actually buying week on week.

on the other side, you have to update the basket because buying habbits do change. (the point was made above about still buying VHS... it just doesn't happen any more.

I feel that the problem is adding tech items to the list only confuses the situation.

because then we get into the predicament of mp3 vs mp4, ignoring the fact that mp4 players actually support mp3, so most people already probably had an mp4 player, and indeed last year they probably actually looked at an mp4 player and called it an mp3 player because it still had ipod in the product name and they didn't know any better.

the fact is that tech depreciates far too rapidly. what costs a thousand quid one year, might be only five hundred the next. so with that in mind we realise that we have to update the list. because whilst your high ticket item dropped by half, your bread and milk increased say a thousand percent.

in that situation they say that last year a laptop and a loaf of bread costs £1001 this year it only costs £510... so we see deflation of around -50%... but in the real world goods we see inflation at +1000% for the loaf of bread that you buy each week. it only looks like deflation because the laptop halved in price.

simplistic examples aside. tech items should not be on the list, they depreciate far too rapidly. and there is too much variation in price across a range, (for example, if a mobile phone is on the list, do we consider mobile phone to be a shiny ipod being bough for a few hundred or a bog standard nokia being bought for a tenner?

what with the range price variations, massive depreciation, you can never get a true picture of the situation.

the worst part is that they use these calculations for assessing things like payrises and such as well, (actually they use the RPI since that has mortgage payments removed).

and like I said. who buys a laptop every week? regardless of whether it's half the price of last year? who would still buy a loaf of bread every week, (you gotta eat) but the price has gone up ten fold. yet your wages remain the same or lower because they looked at stupid high ticket items that skewed the figures so badly as to be unrecognisable.

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